Thursday, 29 August 2013

Syria: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

It’s interesting to watch the
mainstream media air reruns of the same show. The justifications for war
against Syria reached fever pitch this week on the same grounds they had a
month ago. Then, ABC News, as did much of the press, opened with the headline
‘The White House now confirming Syria's president has in fact used chemical
weapons to kill.[1]’
That’s an interesting use of the word ‘confirming’, the statement is about as ‘confirmed’
as Colin Powel’s speech to the United Nations in 2003 was. That’s the level of
‘confirmation’ it has. Chemical weapons were indisputably used - then and now -
but the question is who used them. No one knows. Carla del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent International
Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV regarding last month’s chemical
attack there were ‘strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible
proof’ the chemical weapons were used by the rebels.[2]
With the current attacks David Cameron admitted to the Houses of Parliament ‘there
is no 100% certainty about who is responsible’[3]. So what is required is evidence to be presented before decisions
are made. That’s how a rational mind works. But that’s too much of a
requirement. Hans Blix, the weapons inspector George Bush kicked out of Iraq
before he could finish inspecting, frustrated with the gung-ho approach of
David Cameron and Barack Obama wrote, ‘the Russians and Chinese have said they want "fair and professional
inspections" in Syria. The Iranians have also agreed…the Iranians have
suffered most in the world from the use of chemical weapons in their war with
Iraq during Saddam's time’[4].
David Cameron retorted he would still bomb Syria on ‘humanitarian’ grounds with
or without UNSC approval, but was forced by MP’s to wait for the UN to publish
a report.[5][6]

What’s more interesting is what were relegated from the press to specialist journals and
op-eds buried deep within news websites at the same time the press is
ratcheting up for a war with Syria. CIA documents describing the extent Ronald
Reagan helped Saddam Hussein gas Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War were
released, with Foreign Policy describing them as ‘tantamount to an official
American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons
attacks ever launched…even if they were discovered, the CIA wagered that
international outrage and condemnation would be muted.[7]’
It always is for the powerless. What was
also hidden deep inside news-websites was a July 2013 report from the House of Parliament
Committee on Arms and Export Controls which found Britain had sold £12billion
worth of chemicals (used to manufacture chemical weapons) to Syria, Saudi
Arabia, China and even has licenses to sell them to Iran.[8]
Another story garnered slightly more fringe coverage; the United Sates sold Saudi Arabia, which is cracking down on pro
democracy reformers in Bahrain, $634 million worth of cluster bombs, which are
banned by 83 nations.[9]Those were non-stories for the press; we’re
the good guys and indoctrination needs to be total.

Morality, evidence and hypocrisy aside,
should we attack Syria? First of all the military architect of the plan to
attack doesn’t think it would work. Chris
Harmer, a senior Navy analyst at the institute for the Study of War, wrote the
proposal for airstrikes on Syria to begin with, and doubts their effectiveness.
‘I never took my analysis of a cruise missile strike to be advocacy even though
some people took it as that…if we start picking off chemical weapons targets in
Syria… he’s (Assad’s) going to start dispersing them… you’re too late to the
fight.’[10]
But the repercussions would only then
begin. The former Syrian foreign minister
stated if attacked ‘we will defend ourselves[11]’,
as would any state; probably using Russian
anti-ship missiles (nicknamed ‘ship killers’) with a distance capable of
reaching Western Naval ships positioned in the eastern Mediterranean. Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran, Syria’s strategic ally, warned
‘the region is like a gunpowder store and the future cannot be predicted’.[12]A member of the Syrian Ba'ath national council,
Halef al-Muftah, said Damascus would
view Israel as behind any aggression and it will ‘come under fire
should Syria be attacked by the United States.’[13]
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov even had to make clear an attack
wouldn’t trigger a war between Russia and NATO, effectively a third world war.[14]
So an attack is folly according to the architect of the plan, would drag in
Israel and Iran, with Russia (sick of seeing itself encircled) explicitly
stating it wouldn’t immediately trigger a third world war, probably.

So what are the remaining arguments for
attacking Syria? For the world’s agenda setter, the New
York Times, ‘Presidents should not make a habit of
drawing red lines in public, but if they do, they had best follow through.’[15]
So Obama might be embarrassed if he doesn’t attack Syria over a statement he
accidently made, or risk the consequences of attacking. Hmm. Tough one.

The United States is a democracy (so I’m
told), so what do the people think? Do the American people favor war? First we
need to get some context. In March of 2003, 62% of Americans favored a war with
Iraq[16].
By December 2006 that figure had fallen to 26%.[17]
In 1965 on the eve of rapid escalation, 61% of Americans approved going to war
with Vietnam, by 1971 only 28% of Americans still agreed with the decision to
go to war[18]. How
many Americans favor attacking Syria right now? Nine percent[19].
It would be the war with the least popular sanction in modern American history
without comparison. Obama would outdo George Bush and Richard Nixon three fold.
Not bad for a Nobel peace-prize winner.

So why are we really encouraging the gulf
dictatorships to send in arms and watch Syria rip apart? With the Bush debacle
in 2003, Iran became the most powerful nation in the region. By implementing democracy
(against it’s initial plans) in Iraq, Bush and his gang of neo-cons created a
Shiite arch stretching across Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, which gives Iran
leverage (if attacked) over Israel through Assad in Syria and Hezbollah in
Lebanon, and control of Iraq. Independence will not be tolerated. The plans to
destroy this arch date back at least to 2005, with the New Yorker then reporting
‘The
U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally
Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni
extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to
America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.[20]’ Helping bolster Al Qaeda sympathizers? America? Who
would have thought? (But remember to point to verses of the Quran after each development).
Now those extremists are fighting alongside people who were genuinely oppressed
and gunned down by the Syrian dictatorship during the initial protests, both
now trying to topple the regime; the only way out is a negotiated settlement
with Syria, Iran and Russia, and forcing the gulf-states to stop sending in
arms. But that won’t happen. All the muscle flexing is Obama not losing face
for a statement he made by accident. The Hezbollah-Syrian quagmire is just too
beneficial for the West, in the greater scheme of things it paves the way for
the Super Bowl: The Iran War. Iran is four times the geographic size of Iraq
with a population three times larger, which is religiously homogenous and loyal
to the state. When the Iran war happens it’s going to be the biggest pile of
human corpses since WW2. I said ‘when’ because it is coming, but that’s another
article. Syria has to be dealt with first.